Non Toxic Printmaking Class at Cambridge Center for Adult Ed

I just saw this non-toxic printmaking class, if anyone else is into printmaking and wants to be able to do it in the studio without poisoning everyone! I have taken 1 printmaking class through the Brookline Adult Ed, and 4 German classes with Cambridge, and I have really liked all of them. This class will probably be at the Brattle Street building by High-Rise bakery in Harvard Square, and is a little over $200 for 8 classes on Thursday nights, starting mid-June.

This printmaking class is taught by someone from SMFA, and the primary reason I want to do it is to get a feel for the solarplate etching, and using the water based Akua etching ink. I have wanted to try these all winter but didn't want to get a ton of expensive supplies only to ruin them through blind trial and error. Here is the solarplate website, and here are a ton of images of work done with this process on flickr.

I also have a small manual table top press with felts than can accommodate about a 9"x18" plate, so if anyone ever wants to do any monoprints or lino cuts and doesn't have access to a press you are more then welcome to hang out with mine. I just got a small butcher block table to have a dedicated space to set this up too.

Artists Megan is excited about

Hi Danielle, hi everyone! Here are some artists I love, whose pieces I recently got to see in real life. I was in Portland a couple weeks ago and they have a pretty nice, if a little small, art museum. The modern art wing was really nicely laid out with a lot of really cool pieces in it.

Since I like cutting paper so much, I was really psyched to see a ton of Kara Walker's art. She seems to work a lot (or only?) in black and white, but also had a few pieces that were cut to stand up in a sort of scenic diorama. Her art has a lot of imagery about race, gender and sexuality, and I am totally fascinated by how fine her cuts and lines are. She tends to display the paper very very flattened, so her pieces often look like silkscreened black ink on white.


Another artist I really loved, was Mickalene Thomas. Her silkscreens are AMAZING! The picture below is so much more amazing and detailed and vibrant in real life. She also sometimes uses rhinestones or glitter, which sounds like a weird effect. Somehow it looks perfect, and not at all cheap or tacky. Or maybe the cheap and tacky quality of rhinestones is what makes it so perfect? Either way if you ever see or hear of an exhibit of hers around, and you like silkscreens, I would highly recommend going, they are so beautiful.

So there are 2 artists that made me feel really excited to work on my own stuff.